Sunday, 27 April 2014

Here are two very different ways to lift your mood if you
feel down. I can’t help wondering if these are the sorts of things that don’t
both work for most people. Is it one or the other or can it be both?

It started when I heard someone say that if they feel a bit
down they get out the Vim and a damp cloth and clean the plug sockets. Easy to
scoff, I thought, but who am I to say it won’t work? I've never tried it. So I took
the time to think it through:

Feel down

Find cloth

Damp it

Get Vim

Re-damp cloth which has dried out while at shop
buying the Vim

Move furniture to get at plug sockets

Search for chisel to chip off encrusted dirt

Cause avalanche of tools (all non-chisels) from shed

Opt for a knife instead

Find another cloth as the first has been used by someone
else to clean the dog’s feet

Damp it

Have a go at the plug sockets

Blow all the fuses

Sleep for 2 days

Wake refreshed.

It works!

Who am I kidding? I concede the ground on the tidy house
front. My house is not that tidy. But if I feel down, I take a walk outside and
mooch about the garden.

Even allowing for stray thoughts such as ‘that chair
must have been left out all night’, a few minutes contemplating the garden
beats plug sockets for me.

So is that the norm? Does the garden beat the plug sockets
or do most people find solace in both arenas?

Wednesday, 2 April 2014

Today my interviewee is prolific writer, blogger and novelist
Stuart Aken. I’m
looking at his work through the lens of three of the biggest names in
science-fiction and fantasy. Stuart has just published Joinings, which is available as an ebook and a
paperback in the UK and in the USA.

Joinings is the first in Stuart's A Seared Sky trilogy.

JRR Tolkein once said of The Lord
of the Rings that years after writing it he found it “good in parts,”
suggesting he might have improved it had he spent even longer writing and
editing. Joinings and the whole of the A Seared Sky trilogy have been a long
time in the making. Is it because you have suffered Tolkein syndrome and been
unable to let the book go or has it been for other reasons?

Writing a
trilogy exceeding 600,000 words is quite a labour of love. Given that the
‘average’ novel is around 100,000 words (some are a lot shorter, of course),
it’s the equivalent of six books. Mine’s been a work in progress for far longer
than intended. What caused the delays? Life mostly.

Looking back, it’s hard to
recall that I drew the map and started researching for the fantasy before my
daughter was born. She’s now in her third year at university! In
between the start and publication of the first book, there have been house
moves (one of which required me to completely renovate the building from floor
to roof), changes in employment, a lengthy period of ME/CFS, and one or two
other life events. But I was also writing other stuff. I’ve written and
published 7 books in that time.

The one
thing that never contributed to the delay, however, was an inability to let go.
I’ve always wanted this trilogy to be out there on the shelves and in the hands
of readers: it’s why I write.

It’s always
fascinating to know how people get started. Legendary fantasy and
science-fiction author, Michael Moorcock, advises, “Find an author you admire
(mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own
story.” How does that fit with your own start as a novelist and is it the
advice you would give to others?

I’ve never
been an emulator. I see writing as a mixture of art and craft. The art is
entirely personal. The craft can be learned from others, of course. I’ve read
extensively, and in most genres, from earliest childhood, so I’ve been exposed
to the very best, and the very worst, of fiction. Any writer who either can’t
be bothered to read or feels it’s unnecessary is doomed to repeat the mistakes
of the worst. So, the advice I’d give to those contemplating this demanding,
exciting, fascinating, frustrating, lonely, wonderful and compulsive way of
life, is to read, read, write, read some more.

Oh, and before you start putting
finger to keyboard, read Dorothea Brande’s excellent Becoming a Writer; it’ll
save you countless wasted hours. And, as a manual for the practicalities, take
a look at Penny’s The Writers’ Toolkit; it’s an excellent tool of the trade.

Your writing
covers a huge range, Stuart, and although you haven’t quite produced the volume
of Isaac Asimov, well known for both his popular science and his science
fiction writing and author of over 500 books, you are a prolific writer. Asimov
put his prodigious output down to having “a
simple and straightforward style”. Is that the secret or is there more to it?

I won’t
pretend to understand the profligacy of Asimov (with whom a recent reviewer
compared me, to my delight). There have been others who have turned out huge
quantities and managed to maintain good quality. I’m never short of ideas, and,
in case I forget something, which is quite likely given the goldfish nature of
my memory, I record all random thoughts and ideas in notebooks that are placed
all over the house, and in jacket pockets, with dedicated pens.

I write quite
quickly and for reasons I don’t understand, have an ability to sit at a blank
screen with no idea in my head and turn out a short story in an hour or so. I’m
a pantster – the very idea of plotting shuts down my creative urge in seconds –
so I write very much on the fly. I’ll do character sketches, research background
for a story, form a very, very loose scaffold in my head before I start
writing. But the actual story is developed as I go along, usually by the
characters deciding how they’re going to get out of the trouble I’ve placed
them in.

In A Seared Sky, there are 110 named characters, so I had to devise a
spreadsheet to keep track of where they all were at any given time in the
story. I generally know where I want the story to end, but I have no idea of
the journey, which, for me, is half the fun of writing.

Thank you, Stuart. That was an amazing glimpse into the world of the
fantasy writer.